Preloader is one of the most essential element in flash application that often gets overlooked. I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this over and over again because I unconsciously consider it as a “nice-to-have” additional element to the application, not as part of the core functionality.

But the truth is, not having a preloader could be costly.

One of the principles of interactivity is that users need to get immediate feedback.

If they don’t get that, 2 things happen in their minds:

1. They would wonder if they had done anything wrong then try different ways to interact with the application.
2. After they try this and that and still get no result, they will think that the application is not working.

So if your user clicks on a button that’s supposed to load an element on your flash application and upon waiting for 2 seconds he sees nothing happening, he would start to get antsy. He might wait for another second or 2, after that he will start the 2 steps above and click on the button again.

Seeing a preloader immediately after clicking on the button confirms the user’s action. That is how the application says: “Yup, I heard you and I’m working on getting this thing to you.”

If you are new to this whole Flash development thing or have been creating preloaders from scratch, check out this MovieClipLoader tutorial from actionscript.org.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 4:20 pm and is filed under flash and flex, tips and tutorials, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.